Ghostly Hell
by Andrithir
Summary: A series which follows Sarah Palmer's career alongside the UNSC's best.


**A/N: This plot bunny came to mind… AND IT WON'T LEAVE ME ALONE. A Prelude to my other story ONISAD.**

**I don't why, I usually don't become attached to my OCs, but ONISAD Characters have grown on me so yeah. Enough said.**

**Also, I don't have access to **_**Halo: Initiation**_**, so I'm not too sure what Palmer's earlier rank was. I'm going to assume Lieutenant since she was an ODST.**

**XXxxXX**

"_Women are women, men are men. Regardless of the efforts of some social engineers to convert humanity into a unisex society, there will always be some form of imbalance and inequality. There are extremely few women capable of being front line combatants both mentally and physically, and fewer still to qualify for light infantry. For a woman to be able to qualify for the ODST is nothing short of great skill and determination."  
__**-Anonymous Senior Officer talking about Sarah Palmer**_

**XXxxXX**

**OKINAWA ISLAND, CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT, EARTH**

Night had fallen, and with it came the torrential rain. During her time at school and the Academy, Sarah Palmer had taken the time to learn about World War II, specifically the Pacific Campaign. Gazing out on the mud choked plains; she could feel eeriness, a repeat in history.

"Take a left here, Corporal," Palmer gestured.

The Warthog shifted beneath her as it curved around the bend. She looked at the map on her HUD, taking in real time Intel from a network of spy drones. The tide was turning in the UNSC's favour ever since the alliance between Elites and the Humans was declared. With the reptilian like race helping the UNSC's Navy in space, the Loyalists were forced to fight without orbital support. That was a day ago.

Sarah could already see the massive difference but it was hard to just say forgive and forget. The Elites had played a pivotal role in decimating countless human worlds. Thankfully she wouldn't have to fight beside any of them on Okinawa. The Pacific Campaign was conducted primarily by the UNSC.

According to rumours, Wu Lau was the home of ONI's Special Activities Division, which meant that there would be SOG Teams operating in the region. It may also be why the Loyalists were so hell-bent on taking Asia while the Separatists were directed elsewhere.

Hornets and Pelicans flew overhead in the roaring winds, each of them carrying teams of Airborne Soldiers; they were the Army's equivalent to the Marine's ODSTs.

"Blood Talons must really want this place," Corporal Gary Wells muttered. He was fresh from ODST training but already a seasoned veteran. By Helljumper standards, he was very young and thus was given the nickname; Kidster. Of course he was by far the least immature in Palmer's entire outfit.

"We'll have our share soon enough," Sarah said.

She raised her open gloved hands and wiped away the mud that splattered onto her visor. Groaning inwardly, she knew that this was going to be a muddy perdition.

"Predator Five-One Actual, do you copy? This is C-Two," a middle aged voice crackled over the COM channel.

"Predator Five-One Actual here," Palmer responded.

"We've got a bird shot down eight klicks north of your position, they're being hit hard and requesting immediate support."

Sarah frowned; the front lines were two kilometres away. The downed Pelican would have to be six kilometres behind enemy lines. She assumed the crew would have to be Nightstalkers, because anyone operating that far would have to be Special Forces. Protocol dictated that the team would have to fend for themselves and make it back home. Obviously they had something precious with them.

"We'll take it," Sarah said.

"Copy, patching you through to Command, C-Two out."

There was temporary static as the signal was redirected to High Command. This was much more sensitive than Palmer initially believed.

"Lieutenant Palmer," an aged womanly voice said, "General Carlson here. Thank you for accepting this."

"Of course, ma'am," Sarah said respectfully. She began to question what she had just gotten into.

"Details of this mission are sensitive, but you and your team are to help extract an ONISAD and their HVI. Uploading their coordinates to you now."

A green dot winked on the display map, the ONISAD team were in the mountains, well in the thick forest and struggling through the mud.

"You are to proceed to Firebase Theta and move on foot to link up with Echo-Two-Five."

"Copy that, we'll bring them home."

That transmission link was cut and Wells looked at her.

"Eye on the road, Corp."

"What's the mission?"

"Spooks," Sarah replied. She swore she heard Gary cuss under his breath.

The Warthogs trudged through the muddy roads and reached their destination. Upon arrival, Sarah could see bunches of Army and Marines milling around. This Firebase was in the Marine's jurisdiction, which meant that the Army were remnants of their old unit.

Wells pulled the Hog into a halt and clambered out of the vehicle, soon followed by Palmer. She ordered her full strength platoon to get ready while she reported in to the base Commander. Introductions were brief as the man had more pressing matters to get to, and he told her that she was cleared to proceed into hell.

Assembling at the northern perimeter of the base, Sarah quickly briefed her team, omitting certain details.

"Spec Ops team was shot down six klicks north. They've got a HVI with them, so let's bring them home."

"Yes ma'am," the men and women chorused.

Predator 5-1 exited the gate; the weary grim faces that bid them goodbye did not go unnoticed. This was Okinawa, where the stories from World War II still echoed. At least this time the men and women here had access to environmental suits which protected them from the harsh weather and diseases.

Sarah led her team into the forest, not once did the rain relent. The water just kept on beating down, making the war torn fields harder to walk through. Mud squelched and parted, only to suck in the feet of the soldiers. Every so often, they would find a dead body floating in a pool of sickly water created by artillery.

Ironic that in a place supposedly teaming with life, there was so much decay. Palmer led her soldiers away from the track and moved them into the shrubs. At least they didn't have to contend with the mud now, but overhead photography had shown that the forests of Okinawa had been reduced to ashes mixed in water. There was no place on this frontier that could be considered an easy place to walk through.

With distant noise drowned out by the rain, and the weather becoming increasingly unforgivable, drones were recalled. Without tactical intel support, Palmer resorted to her team's technician. Wells pulled out a drone from his pack. The quad-fan machine hovered along the ground and threw the trees to scout ahead.

Fighting in the forest was never fun, there was never a fixed battle, just skirmishes and ambushes amongst patrols. Sure there was the occasional full-scale clash, but those were rare.

"Lieutenant, contact, one hundred metres north west of our position," Wells warned.

Immediately, Palmer gestured for her team to split up and engage the enemy from three directions. She crawled through the shrubs and edged closer to the contact point. There was so much rain and movement that if it weren't for her VISR, she would've gotten lost.

Moving up onto a hill that still had vegetation, Sarah scouted the land below. It was a village of sorts, most likely for tourist attraction. But now it was just blackened ruins drenched by rain.

_Use to love rain… hate 'em now_.

Covenant Loyalists were in a rough guarding formation. If the past few years of combat had taught Sarah anything, it was that Covenant tactics were reminiscent of WWII era combat.

"Crawley, you and your people take out the Brutes," she whispered into her mic. "Ellis, target the Hunters. Everyone else, pick your targets."

Green acknowledgement lights winked on as all sections complied. The dots pulsed as the team was ready to execute.

"Fire," Sarah whispered.

A half second later, the air filled with bullets streaking towards their target. Shields winked out of existence as blood and brains were spilt onto the thick brown mud.

"Move in, and make sure they're all dead."

The team moved down from their position, while a section hanged back to be the rear-guard and overwatch. Sarah moved into the large bowl and nudged a Brute; the apelike creature twitched and let out a guttural growl. Before anyone else could react, Palmer pointed her barrel at the monster's jaw and fired. The bullet smashed through the front row of teeth and punched through the skull. It wouldn't be twitching anymore now. Apparently the first bullet had struck the alien in the jaw and thus it wasn't fatal.

"Let's move out."

Mud squelched as the Helljumpers left the area in a ragged formation. Every so often an artillery round would fly overhead and strike some distant position. Force Recon was out calling in targets for the thumpers to great effect.

Traversing through the rocky and muddy areas was getting tiresome, the constant rise and fall of the ground was slowing progress tremendously.

"Lieutenant Palmer," it was Carlson, "Echo Two-Five are getting mighty jumpy. I'm going to patch them through to give reassurance."

"Copy."

Sarah rolled her eyes, aside from ODSTs in her opinion, weren't ONISAD the best of the best… of the best? The crème of the crop grown on the rich soil of Harvest? Maybe she was getting a bit ahead of herself, but she had run into a few SOGs before. They were the impersonal type, but had a grim joking ethos amongst them. HIGHCOM regarded ONISAD-SOGs as the best unaugmented "soldiers" or combatants in existence.

The feed squawked for a moment before becoming crystal clear. She could hear very heavy Covenant gunfire, and the sound of impacting energy rounds. She also heard the soft hissing sound of suppressed weapons.

"Lieutenant Palmer, sitrep," Sarah spoke.

"Arca here, we've pulled back to the Pelican," there was a pause as an explosion thumped close by. "Loyalists are closing in fast."

Another explosion. The man was surprisingly calm, his breath was ragged and he had to yell a few times but his voice was very calm.

"How many of you are there?" Sarah asked.

"Nine of us," came the reply. "HVT is out cold – fuck! I'm hit."

She could hear him cuss and groan and was surprised that he didn't sent her a video feed from his Head Cam.

_Probably how spooks roll._

"Status!"

"Spiker, through the gut. I'll live. Just get here soonish, okay?"

"Copy that."

The link was cut, and Sarah urged her people to double time. They moved as fast as they could through war torn Okinawa, by sunrise they reached the epicentre of a hellish firefight.

"Crawley, Ellis, same deal. Get your people moving!" she barked.

Palmer led her group directly head on into the fray. A quick burst from her MA5C brought the end of two Jackals while Wells and Lenon eliminated a pack of Grunts. A Brute Minor was not too far away when it saw its charge being gunned down by the mud caked Helljumpers.

Sarah threw herself behind a tree and felt a Spiker round brush past her helmet and embed itself into a rock behind her. Wells and Lenon threw themselves onto the mud and returned fire, hitting the beast centre mass. Palmer leaned out of cover and aimed at the Brute's head. With adrenaline pumping, she barely felt the rifle kick as it sent armour piercing rounds into the enemy's skull and toppling over the hulking alien.

Shifting her attention at the smouldering Pelican down in the ditch, Sarah could see two Hunters closing in. But before she could call in her team to deal with the threat, a series of claymore mines detonated. The walking tanks shuddered as tungsten pellets ripped through their exposed orange flesh and ending their rampage.

Palmer waved to her snipers to target any heavily armed infantry units, and told her SAW bearers to get to firing positions. The LMGs chattered as they hammered oncoming enemy infantry, grinding them to a halt. Sarah moved towards the badly battered Pelican. On the side, it had the emblems of the Nightstalkers.

The crew and the ONISAD team were covered in mud and gore. She took a quick moment to take in the sight of them. They were all similarly dressed in terms of body armour. They had the leg greaves, knee pads, elbow pads, shoulder pads and the armoured vest. But the difference lay in the camo pattern, gloves and helmet.

ONISAD were in the grey multicam, they had their sleeves rolled up and a half-helmet protecting their heads. Their faces were covered by AR glasses and a shemagh. It was clear the men liked their spatial awareness and mobility. Full body armour had a habit of hampering those aspects.

Their weapons were also something that should be noted. Most UNSC standard firearms are bullpup weapons for obvious reasons. However the men of Echo 2-5 wielded sleek frontloaded rifles kitted out with SOPMOD.

Sarah made her way to Arca who was the apparent team lead. An empty can of biofoam and empty casings lay at his feet.

"Thanks for the assist," he breathed.

"Where's the HVT?"

"In there," Arca gestured.

He got to his feet as if he wasn't wounded and walked briskly into the hold of the battered Pelican. There in the centre, out cold and covered with tri-weave titanium armour plates was a Covenant Prophet.

Sarah's eyes widened. She had only heard of them and seen them on the open broadcast channel. It or he wasn't as heavily decorated as the other Prophets she had seen, but still this was something.

"I'm not keen on hauling his ass back," Arca said in his accentless English.

"We can't call in extraction, air space is too hot," Palmer said.

"He's a light bastard," another Operative said. FoF Tags said his callsign was Sandman.

_How generic_, Sarah thought dryly. There were way too many Sandmans in the UNSC, most of them in Airborne.

Other Operatives were Lotus and Greystone, the rest were the Nightstalkers. The two ONISAD members hauled the Prophet Minor onto a stretcher and carried him out of the Pelican. Already the battle was beginning to die down, allowing Palmer to assess the carnage. As always, there were dozens of dead grunts, a couple of shield bearing Jackals and half dozen Brutes. Most had been taken down with a single headshot.

Although it went against basic training, a Brute's head was a large target by human targets. ODSTs overrided their second nature instincts to shoot centre mass and aimed at the head instead. This would eliminate the Brute quickly before it could go berserk.

"So, what's the plan?" Lotus asked.

"Back the way they came from," Arca gestured towards the ODSTs.

"I'm not carrying his ass over that."

Palmer brought up her map, there was a highway route close by, but there was a large chunk of it missing so it couldn't really be used to get back to the UNSC lines.

"Highway route nearby, but it's been shot out," Sarah said.

Arca pondered for a moment. "We can use it to get t secondary extraction."

"Alright, let's do it."

The group rallied together and moved out in a leap frogging pattern with Loyalists hot on their heels. Men took turns at carrying the frail alien through the steaming, raining forest as they dashed towards the highway.

A sense of relief flooded Sarah as she reached asphalt. Overturned vehicles littered the roads but at least it was better than clawing through the forest, and at least the cars offered excellent cover. This route would definitely take longer but it wouldn't be as taxing.

Palmer threw herself behind a truck when she heard the growls of Brutes roaring in. Grenades flew overhead and exploded all around her, showering the area with shrapnel and dirt. Arca moved up beside her and fished out a 40mm grenade from his bandolier and shoved it into the underbarrel launcher. His other teammates did the same thing. In unison, they rolled out of cover, aimed upwards and fired. Seconds later, Sarah felt and heard the powerful shockwaves rip through the area, and the howls of the Brutes.

Those 40mm rounds were definitely not standard issue, they packed one hell of a punch. Advancing forward with her rifle poised and ready, Sarah saw the cars shredded into scrap metal and piles of meat with limbs hanging at awkward angles.

"Huh, looks like I got a direct hit," Sandman muttered.

Sarah turned and saw the remnants of a Brute Chieftain. Its body was reduced to bloodied smears still smouldering, and its armour was reduced to warped parodies while its Gravity Hammer was bent and broken in half.

"Nice, man," Lotus complimented.

The group sniper, Greystone seemed to sigh and shook his head. "I shot the thing with a Raufoss. If you had hit it with the grenade, there would be nothing left. You hit the Grunt over there… because all I see is a head and a gas mask."

Palmer groaned inwardly as she heard the men make grim remarks as if they were discussing the weather. These spooks gave her the chills.

"Police the noise, gentlemen," Arca ordered.

…

**BASE HOPE**

It took the better part of the day and nights to get back, but at least run in with the Covenants were minor and thus no major casualties to Sarah and her people. They were Special Forces for a reason after all. She hadn't stuck around long enough to see the handover of the Prophet Minor. In all honesty, she really didn't care.

Being a woman did have some of its perks, for example the bathrooms were usually empty in comparison to the men's.

_Thank you Sappers for setting up this little paradise_, she smiled.

Sarah entered the bathroom, chucked her bag onto the bench and slung a towel over the cubicle top. She let the cold water cascade down her armour; she watched it turn a murky brown as it washed the dirt off the black plates. Satisfied that all of the dirt and mud was gone, she pulled off her helmet and tossed it over the cubicle and heard a loud thud seconds later.

No one was in here, so she could loosen up a bit. She switched the water to hot and began removing her armour, followed by the black bodysuit and then her clothes. She let the stream soothe her aching muscles. Once she was done, she turned the water off and got dressed.

Unofficial regulations said that all officers must dress to a higher standard, but with the blasted heat and humidity, Sarah didn't give a damn. She wore a singlet and an unbuttoned overshirt with the sleeves rolled up and let her dogtags dangled in front of her chest so everyone could see her rank.

Okinawa was too hot this time of year, but at least it was better than Gaudalcanal. Sarah moved to the mess hall and could see that other officers were dressed in a similar fashion.

_Damn you global warming… and glassing, _Palmer swore inwardly.

The mess hall was just a prefab shelter with flaps, and the internal climate was marginally better. People were cueing to get their lunch. Sarah looked at the menu and couldn't help but roll her eyes, she had seen this when she was on Guadalcanal.

_Rice without, without beef  
Rice without, without chicken  
Rice without, without lamb  
Rice without, without tuna  
Rice without, without salmon  
Rice without, without cod  
Rice without pork  
Don't like today's menu? We have  
Pasta without pasta… and sauce  
Noodles with ketchup  
Spam-less Hamburger  
And everybody's favourite, MREs._

Apparently the catering staff had a sick sense of humour, especially those in the Pacific.

As the line moved forward, Sarah grabbed a tray and looked around the eating area. Most tables were filled, and there was a wide berth near where the Special Forces ate. It was like a sea of shaved heads surrounding an island of assorted hairstyles –which remained within regulations of course.

"What would you like ma'am?" a young server asked. He was probably in nineteen.

"Rice without, without the beef and the lamb," she said.

The food was poured onto her plate. It looked fresh, tasty and of course, edible. She grabbed the tray and box of juice, and moved off to find a place to eat. There was a spare seat next to ONISAD… good enough. They seemed alright people and so long as they didn't talk about politics or friendly rivalry, everything would be fine.

"Nice of you to join us," Sandman said.

They all looked about the same age, light stubble and neatly cut hair. Greystone and Arca had pale skin but appeared to be of Oriental descent. Lotus however had darker skin but cheerier expression. Sandman had dark brown hair and hazel eyes, his grim expression matched Arca's.

"Thanks," Sarah said curtly and set down the tray next to Greystone.

"Least we could do," Lotus said, trying to make her feel welcome.

"So what are you guys going to do tomorrow?" Palmer asked, attempting to make conversation.

"Sleep in," Lotus said with a smile.

"Then wake up, get shipped out… followed by more sleeping," Arca added. Though it sounded like these men rarely got any sleep.

She watched as Sandman swallowed a few pills from a very plain looking bottle. Seconds later, Arca and Greystone followed suit.

_Of course… pills_.

"So where are you from?" Arca asked.

"I was from an Outer Colony called…"

A chime interrupted her. Arca quickly pulled out his TACPAD and opened an incoming message.

"Shit," he swore.

"What is it?" Palmer asked.

"Innies," he growled, "they've hit Wu Lau."

Sarah had heard of Wu Lau before, it was like 21st Century USA's Langley. She guessed that after the destruction of ONI Alpha Base at New Mombasa, most of the staff would've headed to Wu Lau. Technically, she shouldn't be aware of information like this but in times of war, news spread like wild fire.

**XXxxXX**

"_All I'm saying is if we add some magnetic coils onto our weapons, we could increase the velocity thus stopping power of our bullets. We'd have a higher chance of being able to take down Elites faster. Our gun designs have ample space; at an extra cost of one thousand credits we should be able to turn our standard MA5 rifle into a gauss rifle."  
__**-Saps**_

**XXxxXX**

**A/N: So what do you think?**

**Please leave a review and let me know.**


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